Today the Motor City Machines / PAC Racing team is down at Harlan, Kentucky racing in the ECOR Harlan KOH Qualifier. Mike (AlumCJ) qualified last month for KOH 2011 at the SMORR KOH Qualifier in Missouri, so he's racing to get some more seat time for the big event.

Event coverage is available through NC4x4. The C-class is the unlimited class that Mike will be running in, the race will start at about 1pm.

Yesterday morning Mike, his wife, his brother Dave (co-driver) and I left Fenton at just after 7am and rolled into Harlan at 4:30pm just before the 5pm tech deadline. Tech went smooth, so no issues with coming in close to the deadline. At 7pm we hit the driver's check-in where they had some awesome bar-b-q while they rattled off the rules.

This morning we had to be up on the mountain before 9am to prep the buggy and watch the A and B classes race. The should wrap up around noon or so, and then they'll prep the course for C-class and they'll be off.

Last night the big shock upon rolling into the pit area was seeing Derek West's buggy burnt to the ground. Rusty Bray was going to race it today and was out prerunning and the rig caught fire. Rusty put some comments and pics on pirate4x4:

There were 20 rigs starting in his class. Mike was lined up near the back since the spots were chosen based on when you registered. I think he was in the 7th row in side by side starts. He won the hole shot on the start, but had to back off because we didn't get any prerunning in, and he had to follow the guy to know where to go!

We also were trying to help out Stan from Branik Motorsports since he was racing to try and qualify for KOH. Branik was pitted next to us and we were helping out Todd Puckett who was two down. Puckett's pit guys were awesome. They had everything you could think of and more. Between the three groups and some folks from Nazir Adam's team coming down, there was a huge swarm around the cars helping the teams get out fast.

In the first lap Mike was making up good ground until he tried to pass someone in the rock garden and got tippy and rolled over. He tried to right it but with no luck. After they tried a number of things they eventually got some help and got righted again.

Mike ran across Stan from Branik who was having problems with his cooling fans and had a flat tire but had already completed his first lap. They were able to patch up the electrical issue and swap Mike's spare onto his rig to get back to camp.

Stan got back to the pits first, and we swapped his tire and topped off his tranny fluid, gave him a new relay, and he was off. We fueled Mike up and loaded another spare and did a quick fluid check and they both left to run Stan's 3rd lap together (with Mike only running his second).

At this point, Stan was running in 3rd or 4th and Mike was out of contention so the hope was to try and get Stan into the 3rd qualifying spot. Mike had a radio to talk with us, but Stand didn't, so it was helpful to get status updates and they moved along.

Stan took the lead and Mike followed behind until checkpoint 2 when Mike cut a tire. Stan continued on while Mike swapped tires. Shortly after Mike got his tire swapped, he lost his power steering pump and the spare was quickly losing air.

At this point, we couldn't even help Stan, so Mike short-coursed it to try and get back to the pits before his spare went down and to help us in the pits. By the time he got to the bottom of the hill that lead to the pits he was riding on the rim. He didn't want to shred the tire so they became spectators.

At the same time, Stan was continuing to fight his overheating issues in the field. He had finished lap 3 and was working on lap 4 when he ended up getting pulled off the course and also DNFing.

In the meantime, the crews were all helping out Todd when he would come through. He has a nice buggy with a healthy SBC that is carb'd! I haven't seen a time breakdown, but I believe he ran the fastest 1st lap. He had some issues on his 2nd or 3rd lap that slowed him down, but he did pull out a 2nd place finish and qualified for the KOH.

By the end of the race, 5 of 20 racers finished. The course was brutal. Many rigs didn't complete their first lap. We were pretty happy that with some air from a spectator, Mike was able to limp back to the pits with bad steering and a tire that was going down again. Many teams were out in the woods until late recovering their rigs.

I also should say we met a ton of cool people down there. At the dinner we sat with Jody Treadway and "Snappy" who race in the A and B classes. They gave us some good insight on how ECORS works and what to expect. We ran across them many times on raceday, and they were great folks to meet.